La Follette and La Follettism

In his new period of leadership La Follette
represents the progressivism of 1912 brought down to date in the
personality of one man and modified by the war experience. He seems now
to appeal to the class interests of farmers and workers rather than to
the general public welfare of the country as a whole. He is attempting
to organize the forces of discontent for the accomplishment of immediate
results. His programme is one of strategy rather than of statesmanship.
He is the organizer of a bloc system intended to destroy the two-party
system as it now exists, leaving to the future the problem of the
formation of new parties to replace the old.

Fortunately we have his views fully expressed in the statement presented
to the Cleveland Convention of the Conference for Progressive Political
Action. Over and over again in that document he reiterates his belief
that "the paramount issue" of 1924 is "to break the combined power of
the private-monopoly system over the political and economic life of the
American people." He declares that this "system has grown up only
through long-continued violation of the law of the land and could not
have attained its present proportions had either the Democratic or
Republican parties faithfully and honestly enforced the law." He refers
to John Sherman as "the clearest-visioned Republican statesman of his
time," and describes the Anti-Trust Act of 1890 as "the most effective
weapon that the ingenuity of man could devise against the power of
monopoly while it was yet in its infancy."

The statement then proceeds to review the history of the growth of
monopoly and the failure of succeeding administrations to enforce the
Sherman Act. He notes that in 1908 the Republicans promised to revise
"the prohibitive tariff duties from which the monopolies derive much of
their power, but the iniquitous Payne-Aldrich Tariff Bill was written in
1909 in admitted violation of the solemn pledges of the Republican
Party." Again, in 1912, he points out that the people voted that the
power of monopoly must be destroyed and that President Wilson forcibly
expressed himself in opposition to the power of the trusts and
corporations. In spite of the vote of the people in 1912 and Wilson's
recognition of the pledge in his campaign, La Follette declares that
from 1912 to the present time "no honest or continuous effort has been
made by a single administration, either Republican or Democratic, to
protect, the American people from the exactions of private monopoly by
enforcement of the anti-trust laws."

In his opinion, in 1920 "the people expressed their resentment at their
betrayal at the hands of the Democratic Party by defeating it with the
greatest popular majority ever cast against a political party in the
history of this country." Since 1921 the American people have learned
that monopoly can be as "bold and ruthless in time of peace as in time
of war." He then refers to the oil monopoly, its resort to "the
outright corruption of a member of the President's Cabinet to attain its
ends," and its enlistment of the services of former members of the Cabinet of the preceding Democratic administration. "Corruption," he
declares, "is the inevitable result of monopoly control over
government."

Senator La Follette concludes his indictment of monopoly with the
following statement: --

"Peace, liberty, and economic freedom are the great principles to which
the American people are devoted. Progressives must champion these
principles until they are firmly reestablished in the life of this
country.

"The organized banking interests which own the railroads, control
credit, and dominate the industrial life of the nation, will further
oppress labor, rob the consumer, and, by extortionate railroad rates and
dictation of terms of credit, reduce agriculture to the level of
European peasantry, if longer permitted to control this government.

"The ill-gotten surplus capital acquired by exploiting the resources and
the people of our country begets the imperialism which hunts down and
exploits the natural resources and the people of foreign countries,
erects huge armaments for the protection of its investments, breeds
international strife in the markets of the world, and inevitably leads
to war."

After certain applications of his paramount principle to European and
domestic affairs, he declares that "the Progressive Movement is the only
political medium in our country to-day which can provide government in
the interests of all classes of the people. We are unalterably opposed
to any class government, whether it be the existing dictatorship of the
plutocracy or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Both are essentially
undemocratic and un-American. Both are destructive of private
initiative liberty."

Senator La Follette's attitude toward what he describes as the
"dictatorship of the proletariat" was also brought out in his letter in
regard to the Farmer-Labor-Progressive Convention held at St. Paul in
June. In this letter he called attention to the fact that he had
devoted many years of his life to an "effort to solve the problems which
confront the American people by the ballot and not by force. I believe
that the people through the ballot can completely control their
government in every branch and compel it to serve them effectively. I
have fought steadfastly to achieve this end, and I shall not abandon
this fight as long as I may live. I believe, therefore, that all
Progressives should refuse to participate in any movement which makes
common cause with any communist organization."

La Follette's paramount issue of 1924 looks back to the Sherman Act of
1890. His references to economic freedom suggest that he has still in
mind the struggles before 1912 when his political ideas first took
definite shape. He seems unconscious that the present situation has
gone far beyond the imprisonment of the heads of big business and the
dissolution of combinations. One misses the social emphasis that should
characterize any forward-looking, constructive dealing with current
economic and industrial problems.

A comparison of La Follette's platform of 1924 and the programme of the
British Labor Party, adopted in 1918, drives home this lack of a
constructive character in his work. No group of scholars and
investigators like the English Fabians has been studying the situation
in America for a generation and working out tentative solutions.
Instead, one man, in the heat of the controversies in which he has been
engaged, has merely adapted certain ideas to the changing demands of the
time.

The succession of third parties and the Progressive Movement form together the source from which the
platform of 1924 is fashioned. Great skill and ability in the
arrangement of materials is shown, but the underlying idea remains the
same. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people is a
supreme principle, but it is not of itself and by itself sufficient to
solve all the complex social and economic problems of the day. Just
here is where La Follette fails to meet the test of constructive
statesmanship. He is an individualist, a progressive, and a liberal
democrat in a period in which the socialization of our politics is the
great issue before the country.

Undoubtedly Senator La Follette's stand for a new alignment in American
politics is the next step in any constructive approach to our problems.
The need of readjustment has been recognized for many years by
thoughtful observers. The inherent difficulty in our rigid two-party
system of expressing intelligent and consistent judgments has been made
hopeless by the divisions within the parties themselves. Somehow
conservatives and progressives and radicals must be organized separately
before there can be even an approximation to satisfactory results in our
quadrennial electoral contests.

The hope of a new adjustment has been strengthened by the nominations of
the two major parties. They have selected excellent representatives of
conservative policies. La Follette sees the opportunity and will use
all his remarkable talents for leadership to take advantage of it. In
his statement he declares that "permanent political parties have been
born in this country after, and not before, national campaigns, and they
have come from the people, not from the proclamations of individual
leaders ... If the hour is at hand for the birth of a new political
party, the American people next November will register their will and
their united purpose by a vote of such magnitude that a new political
party will be inevitable."

IV

An analysis of La Follette's experience and ideas
brings out clearly the fact that he represents the point of view of the
West as contrasted with that of the East. The conviction that the
government is controlled by monopoly grows out of Western life and
traditions. The opposition to the Esch-Cummins Act of 1920, and the
demand for its repeal, is the present-day aspect of the Granger
agitation for the regulation of the railroads of the seventies. The
currency proposals of the Greenback and Populist Parties find their
counterpart in the denunciations of "deflation" and the insistence upon
the reconstruction of the Federal Reserve System. Agricultural credit
is the contemporary objective of those who in earlier years were
condemning the money power and the gold standard. Monopoly must be
destroyed in order to restore the government to the people. In reality,
the warfare against monopoly is an indication of the persistence of
Western democracy.

The hostility to the Federal courts is a manifestation of the same
democratic impulse. A proposed amendment to the Constitution favors the
election of all judges for fixed terms not exceeding ten years, by
direct vote of the people. The judicial veto of laws enacted by the
legislative branch of the government is described as "usurpation" and as
"a plain violation of the Constitution." The claim is made that all
legislative power is vested in Congress because that body is given
authority to override the veto of the President. To do away with the
judicial veto an amendment is suggested specifically giving Congress the right to
override nullification of laws by the Federal Courts. Western
opposition to the appointive Federal Judiciary finds its explanation in
the uniform custom of electing judges in that part of the country.
Western democracy depends upon popular election as the best method by
which the people can secure control of their representatives.

In recent years the condition of Western agriculture has given rise to a
new farmers' movement. The centre of the disturbance seems to be in the
trans-Missouri region rather than in the Mississippi Valley, where the
unrest of the seventies, eighties, and nineties was most pronounced.
The last American frontier section is true to the traditions established
in the settlement of the West.

Since 1920 discussion of the condition of Western agriculture emphasizes
the contrast between the increase in the dividends paid by the great
corporations and the virtual bankruptcy of twenty-six per cent of all
farmers in the fifteen principal wheatgrowing states. Unlimited
prosperity for the great corporations and ruin for the farmer is
described as the direct result of the policy which deflated the farmer
while extending credit to organized wealth. Manufactures and industry
are protected by high tariffs, but the prices of farmers' products are
depressed by financial manipulation. Excessive freight rates put a
premium upon wasteful management and saddle an intolerable burden upon
the farmer. Gambling in farm products results in loss to agriculture
and gives great profit to the middleman. The growth of farm tenancy is
explained solely as the outcome of the economic and political power of
monopoly. To cure these evils, it is declared, the American people must
resume and exercise their sovereign control over their government.
Again the belief in democracy as the panacea for all ills is plainly
evident. The Western farmer has a naive faith in government by the
people which the older East has lost.

The debate on the McNary-Haugen bill, to which so much attention was
attracted during the last session of Congress, shows clearly that the
attitude of the Western farmer is widely held by the people of the West.
The bill was inspired by farm-implement manufacturers, bankers, and
business men; much of the propaganda for it comes from the same sources.
They are embarrassed by the inability of the farmers to pay their debts
and they see no natural developments which are likely to improve the
situation. They declare quite frankly that the bill undertakes to do
for the farmer what the protective policy has been doing for the Eastern
manufacturer and business man. The farmer, they assert, sells in the
world market and buys in a protected domestic market. The prices of his
products are competitive, while those of the goods for which he pays are
artificially fixed by law as a result of the protective tariff.

One of the chief advocates of the proposed legislation is the present
Secretary of Agriculture. A map, published in the farm paper which he
owns, presents the vote graphically on what is described sarcastically
as "farm equality." Tennessee, Arkansas, and Wisconsin joined with the
seacoast states and a few of the larger inland cities to defeat the
measure. Such a vote is suggestive of the continued sectional
differences which underlie the complex economic and social conditions of
the United States of 1924. They form the solid substratum on which the
La Follette movement is founded. Any attempt to judge of the meaning and
importance of the movement without taking these factors into consideration is bound to fail. Lack of
comprehension of Western feeling, and indifference to local issues,
which Western people thought paramount, lost the elections for the
Republicans in 1912 and 1916.

V

What is the prospect of La Follette's programme
being adopted? There is an immense amount of unrest, especially in the
trans-Mississippi and trans-Missouri portions of the West. We are not
fully readjusted after the disturbances of the war. The European
situation is still an unsolved problem. How will these conditions
express themselves politically? Will the percentage of non-voters
remain as large as it has been in recent elections? Will they vote for
La Follette or will they divide along Traditional party lines and will
only extremists and radicals vote for him?

Any estimate that dismisses lightly the possible strength of La Follette
as an opposition candidate is likely to have a rude awakening in
November. He is a remarkable leader. He represents the West in many of
its fundamental ideas. He has been campaigning, lecturing before
Chautauquas, and fighting the railroads and monopolies for thirty years.
No one could listen for two days to the proceedings at Cleveland and
not realize how correctly he understood the ideas and aspirations of the
representatives of the people assembled there. The repeated applause
that greeted the reading of his message by his son was spontaneous,
without need for the mechanical devices used in ordinary political
conventions. He knows the rank and file of laborers and farmers and
voices their ideas and their wishes. Some of the ideas have a sinister
sound to conservative and middle-class ears, but they cannot and must
not be ignored.

The mistake of the East, when it dismisses La Follette as a demagogue,
is the mistake of ignorance. It does not understand the West. It
neglects to visualize the sources from which he gets his power. It
denounces where it should try to understand. It should undertake to
offer reasonable solutions to take the place of the crude projects often
proposed to meet urgent needs. It should help the Western farmer
readjust and not preach to him about the law of demand and supply when
its own interests are fostered by the Tariff.

Furthermore, the East should remember that many present-day policies
have come out of the West. The regulation of railroads, a more flexible
currency and banking system, primary elections, and the initiative and
referendum are a few examples. The Populist "sub-treasury" of the
nineties was the first crude suggestion for the later work of the War
Finance Corporation and the Intermediate Credit Banks of 1923. The East
has first ridiculed, then carefully examined, and at last adopted many
Western proposals.

Finally, the strength of La Follette's hold and its firmness are based
on the soundness of his interpretation of the ideas and the ideals of
the West. In so far as La Follette is representative of the West as a
whole, his power rests upon a solid foundation. As a leader of a class
movement of laborers and farmers no definite estimate can be made. It
is an unknown quantity, not measurable by any established standards. We
can only await the verdict of the voters at the coming general election.